


Where Angels Fear to Tread

by Lacerta26



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Feelings, Love Confessions, M/M, Post Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:08:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21745777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lacerta26/pseuds/Lacerta26
Summary: It’s dark in the garden of Jasmine Cottage, the light and the laughter from the kitchen only spilling so far as Crowley hunches his shoulders against the cold, breath misting in the night air. Desertion won’t go unnoticed in a party of six and he knows someone will come looking for him soon enough.This isn’t the paranoia of the retired agent on borrowed time. This is something new. Not new. This is a feeling as old as the earth.*Azirphale and Crowley take a step forward together.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 86





	Where Angels Fear to Tread

**Author's Note:**

> T rated for this chapter but if I write any more it will likely go up. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!

It’s dark in the garden of Jasmine Cottage, the light and the laughter from the kitchen only spilling so far as Crowley hunches his shoulders against the cold, breath misting in the night air. Desertion won’t go unnoticed in a party of six and he knows someone will come looking for him soon enough.

Aziraphale had insisted they accept the witch's invitation to dinner. Anathema and her young man, Tracy and the Sergeant; nothing too taxing, just all these people, tied together by the end of the world.

Crowley squeezes his eyes shut, scrubs at his face. When he slipped out between dinner and dessert, Sargeant Shadwell had made to follow, clutching his tatty pouch of tobacco, but Tracy had put a firm hand on his arm and kept him in his seat. Crowley hasn’t smoked in a very long time, decades, but he could do with one now, feeling itchy and lost in his own skin.

This isn’t the paranoia of the retired agent on borrowed time. This is something new. Not new. This is a feeling as old as the earth. 

It was all too much, sat in the kitchen, pressed against Aziraphale’s side and counted among the couples. _Long serving_ Shadwell had called it when he looked between them, a rueful look at Madame Tracy that became a disgustingly sweet smile, rather at odds with the rest of his face. These strange little humans accepting the idea of 6000 years of companionship as readily as they’d accepted the end of the world. And yet, Aziraphale had gone still by his side at the suggestion, preternaturally still, and hadn’t relaxed until the conversation moved on. 

To a human mind they fit clearly into a certain kind of box. People look at them and see friends, partners, lovers - have done for millenia because what else could you call it? He’s wanted to demand it of Aziraphale for centuries, choked the question back like so much unsaid but now it feels like something trying to claw its way out of Crowley’s throat. 

_What would you call this? Us? They think we’re lovers, that’s what they see. We who have loved each other for as long as the world has existed. Who have loved each other to hell and back. But still you won’t touch me._ Please _. I need you to touch me._

He can’t demand it of Aziraphale. He won’t. He just wants certainty. Here at the beginning of all things. 

‘Crowley?’ Aziraphale’s voice is soft in the dark, tentative and uncertain and it cuts Crowley deep. Aziraphale hasn’t been uncertain of him, in most ways, for a while. 

‘Just needed some air, angel. I’ll be back inside in a minute.’

Aziraphale has reached him at the edge of the garden now. He glows, a soft silvery sort of light radiating off him that might be the moonlight, might not. 

‘My dear, are you alright?’

‘Ngk. Fine,’ he shakes off Aziraphale’s hand on his shoulder; a platonic touch and a poor substitute for what he really wants as he begins to head back up the garden path.

‘Crowley,’ Aziraphale’s voice is sharper now, apparently determined to have this out. 

Crowley spins on his heel to face him, remembers a bandstand and a different sort of confrontation, ‘you really want to do this here?’

‘I want to know what has upset you. And why you’re behaving this way in front of our friends,’ Aziraphale looks distressed and also a little like he’s close to stomping his foot. Not very angelic, is it, a tantrum. Crowley closes his eyes, draws in a breath just to let it out.

‘We can talk when we get home, it’s fine.’

‘We’re not going back to London until Sunday, Crowley.’

Right. Newton had shown them round the cottage earlier; the spare bedroom, the pull out couch in the living room.

‘We weren’t sure,’ he said with a face that was equal parts disbelieving and in awe of the words he was about to utter, ‘the sofa’s hell on your back and with you being 6000 years old but…’ 

The angel had just bounced on the balls of his feet and said, ‘not to worry dear boy, being an ethereal being tends to keep one spry,’ with no thought to the fact they’d have to share. A bed. An _actual_ bed. Albeit a pull out one. 

Aziraphale catches up to him halfway back to the house, standing so close and looking so concerned. 

‘I wish you would _talk_ to me, my dear.’

Crowley is silent for a long moment, takes off his sunglasses, puts them back on, tension stretching to breaking point before he mutters, ‘all we ever do is talk, angel.’

Aziraphale’s eyes go wide absorbing the shock of it, the accusation in his tone. Crowley might be a demon but he isn’t usually cruel. 

He can’t think of what to do with his hands. For so many years he’s been shoving them into too small pockets, grabbing wine glasses for something to do. Keeping his hands to himself so he doesn’t reach out to touch what he can’t have. Aziraphale was the same, hands clasped behind him or in his lap, but tonight they flutter in the air between them, afraid to settle.

‘What is it you want, Crowley?’

‘It doesn’t matter, you can’t give it to me.’

‘You’re not being fair.’

‘None of this is fair.’

‘Crowley!’

Aziraphale sounds properly distressed now and it makes Crowley sick to be the cause of it but the floodgates are open and there’s no holding back the tide. 6000 years is a long time to hold on to this and no one has built them an ark to shelter in. There’s no white dove to signal the coast is clear. Distance, all this distance between them, and Aziraphale’s eyes pleading with him to not give up just yet, to wait, one more day, one more century, but Crowley has been waiting long enough. It’s now or never. 

‘What are you waiting for, Aziraphale? No one is coming to smite you. We’re safe. We can have this,’ he sketches Aziraphale’s shape with his hands through the air, not making contact and Aziraphale steps back, an involuntary movement but the truth of it. 

‘I know.’

‘Then what’s the problem? You’ve done it before. With _them,_ ’ his eyes flick towards the house, to the humanity contained within, ‘Will and Oscar and Wystan and Go- Sat- Somebody knows who else.’

‘I _know!’_

‘Then what’s the problem?’

‘This is different.’

‘Why? Is it me? You wanted them but you don’t want me?’

‘Of course I want you, Crowley...I...it’s just…’

‘Am I still going too fast for you?’ he means to ask it gently but it comes out cruel and twisted. He can see the shattering impact it has on Aziraphale’s face, collapsing like a dying star and before he can stop himself he’s stepped close, arms raised - they do this, they’ve embraced before, if he asks first - ‘angel, I’m sorry, angel. Can I? Please?’ and Aziraphale just nods mutely and steps forward into Crowley’s arms. 

‘I cared about them, the others, but I didn’t love them. For God’s sake, Crowley, I _love_ you. What if this changes everything?’

They are quiet for a long time. The warm soft press of Aziraphale’s body against him a balm for the anxiety still pricking under Crowley’s skin. This is all he wants; intimacy, closeness, in whatever form it takes. Not to feel like he can’t reach out and take Aziraphale’s hand for fear it will be snatched away from him. He saw the pain of it in Aziraphale’s face for centuries; longing and restraint and denial. He doesn’t want for them to hold themselves back anymore.

‘You’ve no idea how much I want you, Crowley,’ says Aziraphale, muffled into Crowley’s chest.

‘You don’t...I don’t want…’ he pauses, searching for clarity, ‘I want whatever you’re offering, angel. Your hand in mine. A kiss on the cheek. The specifics don’t matter. I just want you not to be afraid of this anymore.’

‘I’m afraid once I start I won’t be able to stop. I’ll want to glut myself on you until there’s nothing left,’ Aziraphale whispers it close, like a secret, and it sends a hot lick of want down Crowley’s spine, chased by sadness. 

‘We have all the time in the universe, angel. And I am a limitless resource. You can have it all; take your fill of me. _Please_.’

Aziraphale smiles, ‘how about we start with a kiss?’ his tone is still a bit watery but there’s that relentless determination back on his face. 

All Crowley can do is nod dumbly as Aziraphale rises up on his feet slightly to get their mouths in alignment and oh, has he done this before, soft at first but not tentative and Crowley makes a noise of exasperation through his nose, deepening the kiss. Aziraphale’s smile against his mouth is the sweetest thing, his hands fisted in Crowley’s jacket to pull him closer and Crowley doesn’t see stars or god, there are no great revelations or secrets revealed just the warm press of Aziraphale’s mouth, the gentle slick slide of their tongues, right here in an Oxfordshire garden, on earth, the two of them, together. 

When they part Aziraphale is flushed pink and fluffy, Crowley's hands having migrated to his hair at some point in the proceedings, and it does something to Crowley’s equilibrium to see the angel mussed and smiling for him, _because_ of him. 

‘We should get back inside,’ says Aziraphale taking Crowley’s hand to tug him back up the garden. Even this, Aziraphale’s hand in his, has Crowley’s heart beating out of his chest, from a standing start to 100mph. 

'You know I love you too, don't you, angel?'

Aziraphale beams, 'since about 1941, dear.' 

‘Lover’s tiff was it?’ says Shadwell when they make it back to the table and then a yelp of ‘away wi’ ya, wimmin’ as both Tracy and Anathema twist in their seats to kick him in the shins.

Aziraphale smiles beatifically, ‘something like that,’ as he gets stuck in to his treacle tart but Crowley doesn’t miss the looks exchanged between their hosts across the table. How is it that these humans, just children compared to them, can be so certain, so knowing. How can they stumble into love and lust with such surety and conviction, get hurt and carry on like it’s nothing, like it’s everything. 

They’ve been accused of going native but in this they still have so much to learn.

They make it through the rest of dinner hand in hand under the table until Newton starts yawning dramatically over his second glass of sherry and Tracy suggests they all head off to bed. Into as yet uncharted territory.

Crowley never fails to be arrested by the sight of Aziraphale in his pyjamas, pale gold silk and bare feet and hair curling damp at the edges from washing his face in the tiny downstairs loo. He is beautiful; it almost hurts to look at him. Crowley is glad he’s already turned out the light, the living room lit only by the adjacent glow of a nearby street lamp outside. He’s less glad of his purely aesthetic decision to sleep only in his boxers, a style choice he came to sometime in the 90s that now feels awfully presumptuous. Now they’ve taken this first step does it look like he wants to go barrelling ahead in Anathema’s living room? He could manifest some pyjamas in a snap but that would be overwhelmingly obvious. 

Aziraphale merely smiles at him, slips primly beneath the duvet and opens his arms. Almost without thinking Crowley winds himself around the angel, a snake seeking warmth and Aziraphale’s hands running smooth and soothing down his spine. 

‘Will you sleep?’

‘I'm not sure, dear. Perhaps if you do.’

‘But you’ll stay with me?’

‘Was that ever in any doubt?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

‘Oh Crowley, no, I’m not going anywhere.’

  
  



End file.
